POE 2 is pure zoom zoom or endless dying. We need a middle ground (and less trade)

Both sides are losing their minds trying to advocate that POE 2 should always been easy and fun, NO IT SHOULD BE ONE HIT DEATH SOULS LIKE!

I've experienced both lately, I finally reached lategame playing a class that wasn't gimped, and though it was fun for a bit, I also find it kind of defeating I very much miss dodge rolling and stacking combos and executing and fighting. There's a fun middle ground where I don't feel i'm going to die all the time, where this is very satisfying. This is where POE 2 is at its best IMO. But I enjoy both other scenarios!

Ideally the game would be about 60% moderate challegne, 30% easy peasy clear through trash mobs, and 10% OH SHIT I'M GOING TO DIE IF I MAKE ONE MISTAKE AND LOSE MY CHANCE TO GET THIS BIG PAYOFF.

Like what do I do now that the game is trivial? It feels kinda hollow.

But more than ever, I think the dev's vision is possible, I hope they haven't given up yet because they are knocking on the door.

SO MUCH is online now, there are obviously kinks and bugs as they optimize and fix things up, but they are on the PATH.

So yeah i think more than anything they need to find that happy middle ground.

One of the big problems I'm finding is that explosive damage ranges is WAY too punishing. When you're playing the game and suddenly some random enemy just outright murders you, that just kills all the enjoyment of the game and makes you wonder why you're even playing.

I hope in the future, they focus more on enhanced enemy health pools. That is a difficulty barrier that is far less agrivating!

And how about some nice damage/ magic find perks for not taking damage over extended periods of time!?

That would be the best of both worlds! You would be rewarding twitch, perfect play, but not forcing players to die all the time.

Mechanics like capping the % life you can deal to certain large bosses, or some sort of logrythmic falloff to incoming damage that tapers off over time would really help the game feel more epic, and not like everything is made of paper once your damage build comes online.

Item diversity is also VERY much hurting. Something radical needs to be done about resists or something, because right now I am so sick and tired of just maxing resists and throwing a few damage mods on top, there is NO diversity of play AT ALL.

Logarithmic falloffs to resists would be HUGE for this, so even a smaller ammount would allow you to be survivable if you compensate with health or other defenses. The tired system of getting to 75 resists is just so overdone, I'm absolutely sick of it. It feels like we're playing a 20 year old game with these same ancient resist mechanics, and all the old fun of getting tangible health and other defensive gains frmo big unique items is sorely lost.

Like POE 2 just doesn't know what it wants to be. It has this massive, overly complex crafting and item and talent tree system, but it's been absolutely gutted of all the interesting and fun stuff! Like what's the point of all this crap if it's just a giant Rube Goldberg machine to make damage and crit chance in a very convoluted manner?

Free item trading feeds into this. Because of mass trading for EVERY SINGLE THING IN THE GAME, that GGG seems absolutely tied to for some reason (is it $$$ related? The game would be SO MUCH BETTTER if certain mechanics were rare and account bound, it would be earth shattering for how much more fun the game would be).

Problem is, everyone can trade for eveyrthing and builds normalize and everything must be balanced around the notion that people are going to have access to all the best things very quickly. So having wacky overpowered FUN mechanics that build off each other in rare and random ways based on a slew of neat unique items and account bound skill and support gems must be balanced around free trade. WHICH KILLS ALL THE DAMN FUN!

I started this post with wanting to just give some positive feedback and say the game is close to being good. BUT GAHDAMN there are some key decisions and mechanics in this game that are just destroying all the potential fun.

What in the heck is going on with this game? It is SO CLOSE to being amazing, but because a hard headed person internally likes free trade too much the entire game is just an excel sheet simulator.

Absolute shame the levels of fun and discovery that could be awaiting us right now if they did away with trade and unfurled the true potential awesomness of great unique items and such.

POE 2 has been ravaged by neckbeards. It's that insidious desire to be the person spamming trade hardest, to get that advantage first, and to vault ahead of the plebs that has stolen the fun that could be flowing from this void.

I hope I'm wrong and that they're able to tie all this madness together to be truly fun, but with the current setups, I just don't see that happening. It's going to be a min/ max, preordained zoom zoom hodge podge of lofty ambitions that never came together, because at the end of the day, what makes ARPG's GREAT! is that thrilling high frequency pang of the rare unique item dropping from the end boss that you JUST KNOW is going to be 30% better than what you've currently got equipped.

Imagine the absolute most rare and crazy and unique items were found relatively easily, but were account bound, so you could only share those items with other characters in your account, and you could only fine 1 every week (with the ability to store these drops week over week up to like 4 drops). These would be the crazy, powerful items that would force you to try something new, some weird wacky hybrid item that causes you to take 2x fire damage but gives +30% life or something with stats that aren't garbage and can compete with the resists you can get off quality rare items so you're not bound to only being able to equip one and having to double down on resists for the rest of your gear (I'm so sick of this current system, it is so absolutely one dimensional and restrictive).

So sick of playing one dimensional, max resists, try one crazy tweak to the formula, and just building around that perfect assortment of crit and restists and attack speed, and skills. It is mind numbing, and the gameplay that flows afterwards is too. You guys gotta do SOMETHING because as it stands the game is suffocating under the weight of this bland balance.

SHAKE THINGS UP! Then figure out how to put the pieces together! How about uber tanky bosses that slowly take more damage.
You get 2 different magic find bonuses from teh loot they drop, how quickly you kill them (A dps check) and how close you got to dying (you could make this even more potent to throw a wrench into the gears and allow tanky builds to shine for once!)


What I would give to get a drop that very few people have access to, that would challenge me to create a fun build unique to me because of the few other unique item mods and items i have, that others couldn't simply just trade for in a few minutes time.

"

tacotruck2082#7355 a écrit :

Like what do I do now that the game is trivial? It feels kinda hollow.

It actually is

At this point the only things to do:

1. Start gathering another OP build
or
2. Continue playing your current build and farm tons of currency (and sell it? why else?)
or
3. Quit till next league

"

SilverWF#6383 a écrit :

"

tacotruck2082#7355 a écrit :

Like what do I do now that the game is trivial? It feels kinda hollow.

It actually is

At this point the only things to do:

1. Start gathering another OP build
or
2. Continue playing your current build and farm tons of currency (and sell it? why else?)
or
3. Quit till next league

or
4. Play SSF and enjoy the game

"

SilverWF#6383 a écrit :

"

tacotruck2082#7355 a écrit :

Like what do I do now that the game is trivial? It feels kinda hollow.

It actually is

At this point the only things to do:

1. Start gathering another OP build
or
2. Continue playing your current build and farm tons of currency (and sell it? why else?)
or
3. Quit till next league

Well let's be fair, they threw the late game together very quickly.

For them to fix this is relatively easy, they just need challenge that outpaces growing power, and from there the game will EVENTUALLY reach a point that it's challenging again.

I appreciate they aren't trying to fix all this stuff overnight, but the question becomes, how much are they giving up on POE 2, and how much are they just saying "foook it everyone likes POE 1 more, let's just go back to that."

I wonder what's going on internally at GGG, do they have big ideas, are they super excited to get this out the door, or are they more scratching their heads wondering, "We did everything we wanted this is the game we always wanted to make, but it's just not as fun as we envisioned, what the heck do we do now? We're burned the heck out, we' pushed hard, how do we find the mojo to fix this mess?"

I dunno, I'd love to see an interview focused on the headspace of where poe 2 is, what they want to do, what worked, what didn't.

Like what is the future of this game? Are they rarin' to fix it, are we going to see some crazy reinventions?

Or was taking the game to its current iteration such a herculean task that there's no gas left in the tank and everything is uncertain?

I think there's a tremendous game here, incredible mechanics. It just needs a few big tweaks to items, trade, and late game difficulty.

It's in a great spot, but they need to start figuring out deliberate actions that will save the game. They need to focus on what will actually work and not keep spinning wheels in mud, which they seem capable of because there is just so much good stuff here.

poe2 is currently too easy and too fast.

more difficulty is ok, but not souls like.

"

Sakanabi#6664 a écrit :

4. Play SSF and enjoy the game

This was my first character playing trade, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. In some aspects the game is more fun, in others it very much shortens the enjoyment of the game.

Havign experienced both modes of play I think the best style of play would be a hybrid of both play styles.

What I would do to fix trade on top of account bound for the absolute most important and gamechanging unique items to make things fresh and fun, I would put multipliers on gold trade costs.

Every time you make a trade IT MATTERS, like BIG TIME.

So your first trade would cost what it does now, but every trade you make (outside of currency) would and an additional .5x multiplier to gold costs.

So if you very rarely trade, no biggie, you just get that one item you really wanted once in a while, that's pretty good, but not earth shatteringly good that it's going to define your play and you just ruin your experience at the auction house.

But we would see and end to this style of play where people put every single item they get on the auction house and the game devolves into a trade game where you're just ripping people off constnatly.

Does GGG understand just how much of a negative effect trade has on the experience?

To know that as you're playing and honestly playing the game to "earn" your items, to know there are some people out there just spamming refesh to find some item so they can turn it around and make a huge profit, and artificially inflate profits by buying some things out... like this is why we have rules and logics in a game to begin with, to create a fun environment.

When you add crappy, greedy, exploitative humans to the mix and give them an acution house, you're basically telling the "edge lords" "Here we created this world for you, harrass our audience freely, exploit them, ruin their fun, take from the meek, bleed them for your power"

It's supremly awful, and I don't know why any studio would destroy their experience in such a way.

Like I guess they're part of this "elite" club. But I just find this behavior so distasteful, by it's very nature, it's a mechanism meant to amplify the fun of a select few, by allowing them to exploit the many.

It's awful. Like why would you make this part of your game? Is this entire ordeal just so a tiny group of greedy, entitled gamers can feel superior to others?

Why would you make this your business model? Why wouldn't you try to bring the most fun to the most players and make the greatest experience possible without feeding into the power fantasies of the most toxic gamers of the bunch?

Just to be clear, competition is good, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be the fastest and best player. I am speaking to trade turning a game into a greedy, exploitative, and diminutive regression of the core experience.

The entire point of gaming, for it to be competitive, and for it to have meaning, there must be fun and fairness. I'd be really curious to know why people like trade, but it always just boils down to "I want thing now, i'm impatient give me all the candies."

Putting an auction house in a video game is like giving a bag of candie to a diabetic. Yes, they want it RIGHT NOW, but the game will be dead tomorrow. It's just so stupid and short sighted.

If the game isn't rewarding enough or doesn't give enough items that players need an auction house, then the problem isn't that there isn't an auction house, it's that the game is too stingy with items.

This is so mind numblingly simple I still blows my mind that this game forces trading.

I really do get the sense that GGG are just chasing nostalgia, they think of their golden years and they're still trying to make that perfect homage to diablo, rather than learning from their mistakes and adapting to a lower attention span audience, and an audience that has the internet and steamers beamed into their heads every day so there is not enough friction to delay pepole just maxing out there characters in a week through trade.

TLDR, but for the trade part - just play SSF dude, srsly, it like.. exists

"

tacotruck2082#7355 a écrit :

"

Sakanabi#6664 a écrit :

4. Play SSF and enjoy the game

This was my first character playing trade, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. In some aspects the game is more fun, in others it very much shortens the enjoyment of the game.

Havign experienced both modes of play I think the best style of play would be a hybrid of both play styles.

What I would do to fix trade on top of account bound for the absolute most important and gamechanging unique items to make things fresh and fun, I would put multipliers on gold trade costs.

Every time you make a trade IT MATTERS, like BIG TIME.

So your first trade would cost what it does now, but every trade you make (outside of currency) would and an additional .5x multiplier to gold costs.

So if you very rarely trade, no biggie, you just get that one item you really wanted once in a while, that's pretty good, but not earth shatteringly good that it's going to define your play and you just ruin your experience at the auction house.

But we would see and end to this style of play where people put every single item they get on the auction house and the game devolves into a trade game where you're just ripping people off constnatly.

Does GGG understand just how much of a negative effect trade has on the experience?

To know that as you're playing and honestly playing the game to "earn" your items, to know there are some people out there just spamming refesh to find some item so they can turn it around and make a huge profit, and artificially inflate profits by buying some things out... like this is why we have rules and logics in a game to begin with, to create a fun environment.

When you add crappy, greedy, exploitative humans to the mix and give them an acution house, you're basically telling the edge lords "Here we created this world for you, harrass our audience freely, exploit them, ruin their fun, take from the meek, bleed them for your power"

It's supremly awful, and I don't know why any studio would destroy their experience in such a way.

Like I guess they're part of this "elite" club. But I just find this behavior so distasteful, by it's very nature, it's a mechanism meant to amplify the fun of a select few, by allowing them to exploit the many.

It's awful. Like why would you make this part of your game? Is this entire ordeal just so a tiny group of greedy, entitled gamers can feel superior to others?

Why would you make this your business model? Why wouldn't you try to bring the most fun to the most players and make the greatest experience possible without feeding into the power fantasies of the most toxic gamers of the bunch?

Just to be clear, competition is good, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be the fastest and best player. I am speaking to trade turning a game into a greedy, exploitative, and diminutive regression of the core experience.

The entire point of gaming, for it to be competitive, and for it to have meaning, there must be fun and fairness. I'd be really curious to know why people like trade, but it always just boils down to "I want thing now, i'm impatient give me all the candies."

Putting an auction house in a video game is like giving a bag of candie to a diabetic. Yes, they want it RIGHT NOW, but the game will be dead tomorrow. It's just so stupid and short sighted.

If the game isn't rewarding enough or doesn't give enough items that players need an auction house, then the problem isn't that there isn't an auction house, it's that the game is too stingy with items.

This is so mind numblingly simple I still blows my mind that this game forces trading.

I really do get the sense that GGG are just chasing nostalgia, they think of their golden years and they're still trying to make that perfect homage to diablo, rather than learning from their mistakes and adapting to a lower attention span audience, and an audience that has the internet and steamers beamed into their heads every day so there is not enough friction to delay pepole just maxing out there characters in a week through trade.

I agree with most of what you said. I played trade in previous leagues and it was OK but stupidly fast. This league I wanted change and I was also tired of constantly broken economy, so rather than wishing for GGG to do something about that I switched to SSF and having time of my ARPG life. I was even advocating for nerfing things (life regen, +skill levels) in the past but now I think that these things are quite OK. We have tools to overcome obstacles so we use them - problem is when we acquire ALL of these tools and our power skyrocket to infinity and beyond. So if there's something GGG should do about difficulty then it's reducing effectiveness of stacking mods by adding soft caps for them and also reducing effectiveness of skill levels above 20, 30, etc. imo.

"

galloper#2354 a écrit :

TLDR, but for the trade part - just play SSF dude, srsly, it like.. exists

Well, trade is borked and unfun for many reasons.
SSF is borked and stressful because then you're playing a game built for trade and artificially making the game harder than it is meant to be.

It's a pick your poison situation.

If GGG made a SSF mode that amplified drops suitable to your build (not class specific) and also made crafting regents 50% more common in the early game, I would be ALL over it.

Now that i finally reached late game I'm finding crafting drop rates to be absolutely insane.

I'm scratching my head, why are crafting drop rates so HORRIBLY slow early game, and so laughably common late game. It defies all logic.

If they made exalts and other crafting regents more common, that would allow for more rubber banbding, you hit a hard boss, you farm a bit, you get more mods on your items and BOOM you can finally beat the boss.

But they don't do this, they basically just make it so you're stuck and farming does little to allow you get grow in power early game.

It makes no damn sense.

What we end up with is a game where zoomers who know what items to get have an easier playthrough than players who are dying and farming repeatedly.

"

Sakanabi#6664 a écrit :

"

SilverWF#6383 a écrit :

"

tacotruck2082#7355 a écrit :

Like what do I do now that the game is trivial? It feels kinda hollow.

It actually is

At this point the only things to do:

1. Start gathering another OP build
or
2. Continue playing your current build and farm tons of currency (and sell it? why else?)
or
3. Quit till next league

or
4. Play SSF and enjoy the game

And? SSF is the same "road to the best zoom-zoom build" just longer than in trade league.

OP is asking what to do after this point